Per capita, Facebook's 9m Australian daily users are comparable to numbers from Britain and the US. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Nine million Australians – more than one-third of the population – visit Facebook every day, according to the social network firm's first detailed breakdown of its local user figures.

Most of the main social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, have previously refused to release detailed daily user figures, especially at a national level.

But Facebook broke ranks on Monday in an attempt to show off its muscle to potential advertisers.

"In Australia, more than 9m people are on Facebook on the web and more than 7.3m [of those are] on mobile every day," the company said.

The Australian figures are similar, in terms of population ratio, to Facebook's user figures in the US and Britain.

There are more than 128m daily Facebook users in America, from a population of 316m.

And Britain has 24m daily Facebook users, from a population of just over 63m.

The breakdown comes after research published last week by experts at the University of Michigan and the University of Leuven, Belgium, that suggested Facebook can make some users feel unhappy.

The two-week observational study concluded that the more Facebook users logged on to the site, the worse they felt – although its authors pointed out that longer-term studies were needed to validate the findings.

Facebook has previously only ever revealed its global and monthly user figures.

That's in line with many other media websites, which often report user figures on a month-by-month basis.

But Facebook said that was becoming an old-fashioned methodology.

"In this world, understanding who comes back at least once a month is only part of the picture," it said.

"Instead, businesses should focus on people who come back online every single day, because that is how they live their lives.

"People are online numerous times in a single day and are constantly connected; creating, sharing and engaging with the content that matters to them."

The daily user figures confirm Facebook os the biggest social media site in Australia.

Twitter has never published national user figures, but experts agree there are about 2m accounts in Australia.

David Cowling, owner of the Sydney-based Vivid Social agency, compiles monthly social media user figures and his latest estimates suggest Twitter has 2.16m users in Australia.